“No force on earth can stop an idea whose time has come” ~Victor Hugo
Yes, ideas germinate privately.
Yes, great ideas have a lonely childhood. Yes, ideas require audacity.
Yes, they have to be put into action.
But then every great revolution, every major technological breakthrough, every scientific invention starts with an idea. And the longer an idea survives the more compelling it is.
For a start, the idea of shifting from a scarcity mindset to the one that is abundant can change our whole outlook towards existence. We’ll be content and our contribution towards a more fulfilled society will be enhanced. And the great thing about ideas is; the more we share them the more empowered we become. A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.
We can think of creating a product unseen so far but has the potential to transform the whole landscape. Yes, we will fear sharing it initially, we might have inhibitions and uncertainty will loom around.
But should that stop us? In fact, that’s where the fun lies. Tinkering with the stuff around, trying something new regularly, and always thinking of the big picture. Scale is of immense here. Can we scale our potential moonshots to a mass level? We do have the potential in creating a roadmap for a product. But can it better humanity once implemented?
Trying to make the world a better place is another compelling idea and it can drive us to our limits without ever tiring us. For millions of years, mankind lived just like animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
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If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness. Dare to dream. If you did not have the capability to make your wildest wishes come true, your mind would not have the capacity to conjure such ideas in the first place. There is no limitation on what you can potentially achieve, except for the limitation you choose to impose on your own imagination.
It’s very hard to have ideas. It’s very hard to put yourself out there, it’s very hard to be vulnerable, but those people who do that are the dreamers, the thinkers, and the creators. They are the magic people of the world. The best ideas will eat at you for days, maybe even weeks, until something, some incident, some impulse, triggers you to finally express them. We must have the courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness. Bold and humanizing ideas need no supernatural nonsense to manifest in the world, they always manage to find support to exist across time. Individuals die, not ideas.
Good ideas alter the balance in relationships. That is why good ideas are always initially resisted. All genuinely creative ideas are initially met with rejection since they necessarily threaten the status quo. A brilliant idea is like a baby in a mother’s womb. You need to bring it out in the world, nurture it, feed it, grow it, till it becomes big enough to take care of itself. If you leave it at the stage of an idea itself, it is as good as non-existent.
It takes courage to be creative. Just as soon as you have an idea, you become a minority of one. We cannot control the way people interpret our ideas or thoughts, but we can control the words and tones we choose to convey them. Peace is built on understanding, and wars are built on misunderstandings. Never underestimate the power of a single word, and never recklessly throw around words. One wrong word, or misinterpreted word, can change the meaning of an entire sentence and start a war. And one right word, or one kind word, can grant you the heavens and open doors.
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A thousand years ago, everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, they knew the Earth was flat. Fifteen minutes ago, you knew we humans were alone on it. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow. This is not the wisdom of the crowd, but the wisdom of someone in the crowd. It’s not that the network itself is smart; it’s that the individuals get smarter because they’re connected to the network. What moves men of genius, or rather, what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is not enough.
Innovation is deviance which means that the rebellious personality is a natural resource for practical creativity. As an innovator, you need to reject the old to establish a new, better, status quo. And one of the most powerful sources of newness is the rebel or maverick, mind. Anyone can produce a new fact; the thing is to produce a new idea. Open the curtains of your mind, let the world know who you are. Do not hide your ideas; set them free. Open the curtains. Feel no fear. If there is truth in your ideas, you become invincible. Ideas define us, our past, our present, and most importantly, our future. The lesson we have learned in life is that it does not matter the size of the dream or idea, find small entry points that can be implemented daily, weekly, and monthly by small tasks that are integral to the entire project.
Tinker. Tweak. Test. Try.
Repeat.